XXXVIII
THREADS AND PATCHES
Though England had not known for fifty years an outbreak so formidable or so destructive as that of which the news was laid on men’s breakfast-tables on the Tuesday morning, it had less effect on the political situation than might have been expected. It sent, indeed, a thrill of horror through the nation. And had it occurred at an earlier stage of the Reform struggle, before the middle class had fully committed itself to a trial of strength with the aristocracy, it must have detached many more of the timid and conservative of the Reformers. But it came too late. The die was cast; men’s minds were made up on the one side and the other. Each saw events coloured to his wish. And though Wetherell and Croker, and the devoted band who still fought manfully round those chieftains, called heaven and earth to witness the first-fruits of the tree of Reform, the majority of the nation preferred to see in these troubles the alternative to the Bill — the abyss into which the whole country would be hurled if that heaven-sent measure were not passed.
On one thing, however, all were agreed. The outrage was too great to be overlooked. The law must be vindicated, the lawbreakers must be punished. To this end the Government, anxious to clear themselves of the suspicion of collusion, appointed a special Commission, and sent it to Bristol to try the rioters; and four poor wretches were hanged, a dozen were transported, and many received minor sentences. Having thus, a little late in the day, taught the ignorant that Reform did not spell Revolution after the French pattern, the Cabinet turned their minds to the measure again. And in December they brought in the Third Reform Bill, with the fortunes and passage of which this story is not at pains to deal.
But of necessity the misguided creatures who kindled the fires in Queen’s Square on that fatal Sunday, and swore that they would not leave a gaol standing in England, were not the only men who suffered. Sad as their plight was, there was one whose plight — if pain be measured by the capacity to feel — was sadder. While they were being tried in one part of Bristol, there was proceeding in another part an inquiry charged with deeper tragedy. Not those only who had done the deed, but those who had suffered them to do it, must answer for it. And the fingers of all pointed to one man. The magistrates might escape — the Mayor indeed had done his duty creditably, if to little purpose; for war was not their trade, and the thing at its crisis had become an affair of war. But Colonel Brereton could not shield himself behind that plea: so many had behaved poorly that the need to bring one to book was the greater.
He was tried by court-martial, and among the witnesses was Arthur Vaughan. By reason of his position, as well as of the creditable part he had played, the Member for Chippinge was heard by the Court with more than common attention; and he moved all who listened to him by his painful anxiety to set the accused’s conduct in the best light; to show that what was possible by daylight on the Monday morning might not have been possible on the Sunday night, and that the choice from first to last was between two risks. No question of Colonel Brereton’s courage — for he had served abroad with credit, nay, with honour — entered into the inquiry; and it was proved that a soldier’s duty in such a case was not well defined. But afterwards Vaughan much regretted that he had not laid before the Court the opinion he had formed at the time — that during the crisis of the riots Brereton, obsessed by one idea, was not responsible for his actions. For, sad to say, on the fifth day of the inquiry, sinking under a weight of mental agony which a man of his reserved and melancholy temper was unable to support, the unfortunate officer put an end to his life. Few have paid so dearly for an error of judgment and the lack of that coarser fibre which has enabled many an inferior man to do his duty. The page darkens with his fate, too tragical for such a theme as this. And if by chance these words reach the eye of any of his descendants, theirs be the homage due to the memory of a signal misfortune and an honourable but hapless man.
Of another and greater personage whose life touched Arthur Vaughan’s once and twice, and of whom, with all his faults, it was never said by his worst enemy that he feared responsibility or shunned the post of danger, a brief word must suffice. If Lord Brougham did not live to see that complete downfall of the great Whig houses which he had predicted, he lived to see their power ruinously curtailed. He lived to see their influence totter under the blow which the Repeal of the Corn Laws dealt the landed interest, he lived to see the Reform Bill of 1867, he lived almost to see the coup de grâce given to their leadership by the Ballot Act. And in another point his prophecy came true. As it had been with Burke and Sheridan and Tierney, it was with him. His faults were great, as his merits were transcendent; and presently in the time of his need his highborn associates remembered only the former. They took advantage of them to push him from power; and he spent nearly forty years, the remnant of his long life, in the cold shade of Opposition. The most brilliant, the most versatile, and the most remarkable figure of the early days of the century, whose trumpet voice once roused England as it has never been roused from that day to this, and whose services to education and progress are acknowledged but slightly even now, paid for the phenomenal splendour of his youth by long years spent in a changed and changing world, jostled by a generation forgetful or heedless of his fame. To us he is but the name of a carriage; remembered otherwise, if at all, for his part in Queen Caroline’s trial. While Wetherell, that stout fighter, Tory of the Tories, witty, slovenly, honest man, whose fame was once in all mouths, whose caricature was once in all portfolios, and whose breeches made the fortune of many a charade, is but the shadow of a name.
* * * * *
The year had waned and waxed, and it was June again. At Stapylton the oaks were coming to their full green; the bracken was lifting its million heads above the sod, and by the edge of the Garden Pool the water voles sat on the leaves of the lilies and clean their fur. Arthur Vaughan — strolling up and down with his father-in-law, not without an occasional glance at Mary, recumbent on a seat on the lawn — looked grave.
“I fancy,” he said presently, “that we shall learn the fate of the Bill to-day.”
“Very like, very like,” Sir Robert answered, in an offhand fashion, as if the subject were not to his taste. And he turned about and by the aid of his stick expounded his plan for enlarging the flower garden.
But Vaughan returned to the subject. “If not to-day, to-morrow,” he said. “And that being so, I’ve wanted for some time, sir, to ask you what you wish me to do.”
“To do?”
“As to the seat at Chippinge.”
Sir Robert’s face expressed his annoyance. “I told you — I told you long ago,” he replied, “that I should never interfere with your political movements.”
“And you have kept your word, sir. But as Lord Lansdowne cedes the seat to you for this time, I assume — —”
“I don’t know why you assume anything!” Sir Robert retorted irritably.
“I assume only that you will wish me to seek another seat.”
“I certainly don’t wish you to lead an idle life,” Sir Robert answered. “When the younger men of our class do that, when they cease to take an interest in political life, on the one side or the other, our power will, indeed, be ended. Nothing is more certain than that. But for Chippinge, I don’t choose that a stranger should hold a seat close to my own door. You might have known that! For the party, I have taken steps to furnish Mr. Cooke, a man whose opinions I thoroughly approve, with a seat elsewhere; and I have therefore done my duty in that direction. For the rest, the mischief is done. I suppose,” he continued in his driest tones, “you won’t want to bring in another Reform Bill immediately?”
“No, sir,” Vaughan answered gratefully. “Nor do I think that we are so far apart as you assume. The truth is, Sir Robert, that we all fear one of two things, and according as we fear the one or the other we are dubbed Whigs or Tories.”
“What are your two things?”
“Despotism, or anarchy,” Vaughan replied modestly.
Sir
Robert sniffed. “You don’t refine enough,” he said, pleased with his triumph. “We all fear despotism; you, the despotism of the one: I, a worse, a more cruel, a more hopeless despotism, the despotism of the many! That’s the real difference between us.”
Vaughan looked thoughtful. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “But — what is that, sir?” He raised his hand. The deep note of a distant gun rolled up the valley from the town.
“The Lords have passed the Bill,” Sir Robert replied. “They are celebrating the news in Chippinge. Well, I am not sorry that my day is done. I give you the command. See only, my boy,” he continued, with a loving glance at Mary, who had risen, and, joined by Miss Sibson, was coming to the end of the bridge to meet them, “see only that you hand it on to others — I do not say as I give it to you, but as little impaired as may be.”
And again, as Mary called to them to know what it was, the sound of the gun rolled up the valley — the knell of the system, good or bad, under which England had been ruled so long. The battle of which Brougham had fired the first shot in the Castle Yard at York was past and won.
Boom!
THE END
THE WILD GEESE
Another historical novel (this time set during the reign of George I), The Wild Geese is an adventure tale set in Ireland and first published in 1908. The story involves the protestant Colonel Sir John Sullivan, who has to deal with rebellious Jacobite factions when he returns to his native country to claim the family estates. This is one of Weyman’s lesser known works, partly due to its modest original print run making the physical edition difficult to come by in recent times.
The first edition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER I.
ON BOARD THE “CORMORANT” SLOOP
Midway in that period of Ireland’s history during which, according to historians, the distressful country had none — to be more precise, on a spring morning early in the eighteenth century, and the reign of George the First, a sloop of about seventy tons burthen was beating up Dingle Bay, in the teeth of a stiff easterly breeze. The sun was two hours high, and the grey expanse of the bay was flecked with white horses hurrying seaward in haste to leap upon the Blasquets, or to disport themselves in the field of ocean. From the heaving deck of the vessel the mountains that shall not be removed were visible — on the northerly tack Brandon, on the southerly Carntual; the former sunlit, with patches of moss gleaming like emeralds on its breast, the latter dark and melancholy, clothed in the midst of tradition and fancy that in those days garbed so much of Ireland’s bog and hill.
The sloop had missed the tide, and, close hauled to the wind, rode deep in the ebb, making little way with each tack. The breeze hummed through the rigging. The man at the helm humped a shoulder to the sting of the spray, and the rest of the crew, seven or eight in number — tarry, pigtailed, outlandish sailor men — crouched under the windward rail. The skipper sat with a companion on a coil of rope on the dry side of the skylight, and at the moment at which our story opens was oblivious alike of the weather and his difficulties. He sat with his eyes fixed on his neighbour, and in those eyes a wondering, fatuous admiration. So might a mortal look if some strange hap brought him face to face with a centaur.
“Never?” he murmured respectfully.
“Never,” his companion answered.
“My faith!” Captain Augustin rejoined. He was a cross between a Frenchman and an Irishman. For twenty years he had carried wine to Ireland, and returned laden with wool to Bordeaux or Cadiz. He knew every inlet between Achill Sound and the Head of Kinsale, and was so far a Jacobite that he scorned to pay duty to King George. “Never? My faith!” he repeated, staring, if possible, harder than ever.
“No,” said the Colonel. “Under no provocation, thank God!”
“But it’s drôle,” Captain Augustin rejoined. “It would bother me sorely to know what you do.”
“What we all should do,” his passenger answered gently. “Our duty, Captain Augustin. Our duty! Doing which we are men indeed. Doing which, we have no more to do, no more to fear, no more to question.” And Colonel John Sullivan threw out both his hands, as if to illustrate the freedom from care which followed. “See! it is done!”
“But west of Shannon, where there is no law?” Augustin answered. “Eh, Colonel? And in Kerry, where we’ll be, the saints helping, before noon — which is all one with Connaught? No, in Kerry, what with Sullivans, and Mahonies, and O’Beirnes, that wear coats only for a gentleman to tread upon, and would sooner shoot a friend before breakfast than spend the day idle, par ma foi, I’m not seeing what you’ll be doing there, Colonel.”
“A man may protect himself from violence,” the Colonel answered soberly, “and yet do his duty. What he may not do — is this. He may not go out to kill another in cold blood, for a point of honour, or for revenge, or to sustain what he has already done amiss! No, nor for vanity, or for the hundred trifles for which men risk their lives and seek the lives of others. I hope I make myself clear, Captain Augustin?” he added courteously.
He asked because the skipper’s face of wonderment was not to be misread. And the skipper answered, “Quite clear!” meaning the reverse. Clear, indeed? Yonder were the hills and bogs of Kerry — lawless, impenetrable, abominable — a realm of Tories and rapparees. On the sloop itself was scarce a man whose hands were free from blood. He, Augustin, mild-mannered as any smuggler on the coast, had spent his life between fleeing and fighting, with his four carronades ever crammed to the muzzle, and his cargo ready to be jettisoned at sight of a cruiser. And this man talked as if he were in church! Talked — talked — the skipper fairly gasped. “Oh, quite clear!” he mumbled. “Quite clear!” he replied. “But it’s an odd creed.”
“Not a creed, my friend,” Colonel Sullivan replied precisely. “But the result of a creed. The result, thank God, of more creeds than one.”
Captain Augustin cast a wild eye at the straining, shrieking rigging; the sloop was lurching heavily. But whether he would or no, his eye fluttered back and rested, fascinated, on the Colonel’s face. Indeed, from the hour, ten days earlier, which had seen him mount the side in the Bordeaux river, Colonel John Sullivan had been a subject of growing astonishment to the skipper. Captain Augustin knew his world tolerably. In his time he had conveyed many a strange passenger from strand to strand: haggard men who ground their shoulders against the bulkhead, and saw things in corners; dark, down-looking adventurers, whose hands flew to hilts if a gentleman addressed them suddenly; gay young sparks bound on foreign service and with the point of honour on their lips, or their like, returning old and broken to beg or cut throats on the highway — these, and men who carried their lives in their hands, and men who went, cloaked, on mysterious missions, and men who wept as the Irish coast faded behind them, and men, more numerous, who wept when they saw it again — he knew them all! All, he had carried them, talked with them, learned their secrets, and more often their hopes.
But such a man as this he had never carried. A man who indeed wore outlandish fur-trimmed clothes, and had seen, if his servant’s sparse words went for aught, outlandish service; but who neither swore, nor drank above measure, nor swaggered, nor threatened. Who would not dice, nor game — save for trifles. Who, on the contrary, talked of duty, and had a peaceful word for all, and openly co
ndemned the duello, and was mild as milk and as gentle as an owl. Such a one seemed, indeed, the fabled “phaynix,” or a bat with six wings, or any other prodigy which the fancy, Irish or foreign, could conceive.
Then, to double the marvel, the Colonel had a servant, a close-tongued fellow, William Bale by name, and reputed an Englishman, who, if he was not like his master, was as unlike other folk. He was as quiet-spoken as the Colonel, and as precise, and as peaceable. He had even been heard to talk of his duty. But while the Colonel was tall and spare, with a gentle eye and a long, kindly face, and was altogether of a pensive cast, Bale was short and stout, of a black pallor, and very forbidding. His mouth, when he opened it — which was seldom — dropped honey. But his brow scowled, his lip sneered, and his silence invited no confidence.
Such being the skipper’s passenger, and such his man, the wonder was that Captain Augustin’s astonishment had not long ago melted into contempt. But it had not. For one thing, a seaman had been hurt, and the Colonel had exhibited a skill in the treatment of wounds which would not have disgraced an experienced chirurgeon. Then in the Bay the sloop had met with half a gale, and the passenger, in circumstances which the skipper knew to be more trying to landsmen than to himself, had maintained a serenity beyond applause. He had even, clinging to the same ring-bolt with the skipper, while the south-wester tore overhead and the gallant little vessel lay over wellnigh to her beam-ends, praised with a queer condescension the conduct of the crew.
“This is the finest thing in the world,” he had shouted, amid the roar of things, “to see men doing their duty! I would not have missed this for a hundred crowns!”
“I’d give as much to be safe in Cherbourg,” had been the skipper’s grim reply as he watched his mast.
But Augustin had not forgotten the Colonel’s coolness. A landsman, for whom the trough of the wave had no terrors, and the leeward breakers, falling mountain high on Ushant, no message, was not a man to be despised.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 547